Originally Posted by
Ariesagain 
I'm going to throw out another idea...estate planning/management for seniors.
I'm going through this with my aging parents right now and essentially my father has money stashed in a zilion places, which made sense for diversification but is now an organizational nightmare. Some are pretax, some are after tax, some are tax free, some are state tax free but the IRS get a chunk...it's a mess.
It's also a really delicate issue in helping people who may have lost many of their cognitive faculties make difficult decisions in a timely way. It takes enormous patience and compassion...which is where you would come in.
We have a choice among their expensive estate attorney, an expensive tax attorney, and an expensive tax accountant and what we need to get done falls just outside of the job description of any one of them.
Just throwing that out there as an idea...
This is a BIG part of what we do at our firm. While we do this for existing financial clients, we also do this as a project-based service for those that do not hold accounts with us. It's AMAZING when we get ahead of the issues, consolidate what makes sense & advise on the best way to spend-down assets in a tax efficient way, among so many other things.
When that happens & worst case scenario comes when a client passes away, their families ALWAYS contact us to tell us how easy & manageable we made the process. They literally have to open a file to find everything organized, summarized, laid out. They get to grieve instead of standing there, scratching their heads wondering where to even begin. We organize things for the client to take to those expensive attorney/CPA meetings so that they can get the most use out of the time & money they are spending there - we get everyone on the same page to the extent that the client wishes to have our involvement, basically.
But even after-the-fact, with estate issues we have made a huge difference for a lot of people. A big part of what I do is explaining it all to the client & baby stepping them into understanding the language around it all & feeling empowered to understand & manage it. It's THEIR lives.
The Financial Therapist part was a crazy irony - I ran across an article about it in an old issue of Yoga Journal.. but it is SO much a part of what I already do! When people call to talk about their accounts, 9 times out of 10 they just need to TALK & I hear all about their fears - not just about money, but how they manifested in money.
Liz - I think what you are talking about is perfect & from the little I *know* about you from your posts, you'd be perfect AT it. We think there's a big gap in exactly what you talk about - educating & empowering the employees to understand their benefits. Especially in small businesses. We spent some time analyzing it for our firm but feel like we'd need someone to be able to dedicate themselves exactly in the way you describe, 100% full time & likely with an assistant - but the lack of that type of business in our area specifically makes it not so cost-effective to pursue. The employers often need help understanding all of it more than they realize too - they see the tax savings but it takes a bit to grasp the layering of third party admins, fee schedules, specific plan details & reporting requirements.